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Many loving parents are very attentive to the physical and emotional needs of their children and do a wonderful job meeting those needs, but they forget that their children will not always live with them (hopefully) and will one day have to support themselves.
Here are some ideas:
Encourage your children to think about what they want to do when they grow up. Do not make up your childs mind for them.
Expose them to a wide variety of subjects or future carrier fields.
Take them to the zoo, to the local fire department, to the local police station to meet police officers, to the courthouse, when you take them to the doctor or dentist for their cleaning, talk to them about their job and involve your child in the conversation.
When your child indicates an interest in a subject, become involved.
My son said he wants to be a zoologist, so we started an insect collection.
We also study the anatomy of the fish we are cleaning and look at unicellular organisms we discover in various water samples we collect.
My daughter wants to be a doctor or ballerina, so we study anatomy terms and my wife helps her with the girly ballerina stuff. lol.
If your child wants to be a carpenter or architect, encourage them to design a dog house or something and do what you can to help them build it.
Make it fun, not work.
To encourage them to learn, my children get asked questions from time to time and if they answer correctly, they get some spending money. This is usually me asking them a few questions during the ride to town.
Be involved with what is going on at school. Your childs formal education ties it all together. You can give them a great foundation in terms and ideas, but if your child doesn't learn to write and get a strong foundation in math, his learning in college will be greatly retarded.
Help them with their homework.
Read to them nightly and encourage them to come up with their own stories which you can write for them if they are not old enough.
This is just a list of some ideas to get parents to thinking. Your experiences and ideas are very welcome.
14. I would also say let your kids help cook (boys and girls) - even if they just pour what you've already measured into a bowl or drop the spagetti into the pot of water for you. They love to help - and even though this may make things take longer - in the long run it is well worth all the extra help they give you. As they get older they can really help and will have more of an interest in helping( as well as actually learning how to cook from watching and helping for when they move out).
15. Make things together or even just for them - I almost always make my kids Halloween costumes and for my son I know they mean so much more to him - just knowing we took the time just for him and did what he wanted. Even this year we could have gotten a molded plastic sword for his knights costume, but he didn't want it - even though they look more real than the wooden one we made and painted. It is a fun process to decide what they will be and talk about how each peice of the project should look and what we can use to make it. It takes alot more effort than just going to the store but it's also great knowing that no other kids costume is going to be identical.
But you can apply this to things other than costumes - Kids are always wanting to make things - even if you do 90% of the work - if you talk about it with them as you do it they feel involved and still get the quality time with you - and as they get older and more confident ( happens at different ages with different kids) they will do more of the work and you will be more of a provider of materials and ideas.
16. Let them make decisions and mistakes( as long as they are not harmful to themselves or others). Sometimes trying something ( even if you already know the outcome before they do it) and messing up will teach them a lesson they will never forget ( and you can help explain why afterwards)
